Nightlife - New York in the 70s

This is a smashing collection of photos of New York arty and queer and rock-and-roll society in the 1970s. The photos are all copyrighted by Allan Tannenbaum. I stole this link from Pete. And like he says, these are NOT work-safe pix so look at them late at night in the privacy of your study. Or with an open-minded friend.

Riverbend talks back

Baghdad Burning's point by point reply to George Bush. It's nothing you haven't heard before, but dammit, we just have to keep saying it.

Blogkeeping

Or not, as the case may be. I have been very remiss, I know. I have just come through a re-organisation of the division of the company I work for. I have "come through" in the sense that I have kept my job, by basically re-applying for it. A number of us were forced to go through a selection process involving tests and interviews. I think about 2/3 of the project team I am on did not make it, which does not bode well for the stress-free completion of the project. This reorganisation was forced upon us by economic necessity, and the management layer was hit at least as hard as the lower tiers, so there is not much point in moaning about it. Still, British people do like a good moan, and redundancies are never painless, so the stress levels have been high and are not going to go down very soon.
We recently took a little day trip to Ludlow, a place I have wanted to visit for a while, because of its foodie reputation. It was nice. We bought some foods. We had company in the house yesterday and overnight. DH made a smashing cassoulet with venison (from Ludlow) and chorizo (from the local supermarket) and flageolet beans and fresh tomatoes. My buffalo wings, made with free-range chicken from Ludlow, got lots of compliments, but were very easy to make. You can read more about Ludlow and our recent food and drink explorations on Deborama's Kitchen.
What with all this going on, I have also had to miss out on a bit of book-crossing activity. The Unconvention in Birmingham is just now drawing to a close, but I missed all of it, as well as the mini-meetup in Beeston two weeks ago. I was sorry to miss both of these events, just as I was getting into the BC spirit. I did manage my first release, a controlled-release to two non-BC friends from the train, of a really wonderful book that DH and I both liked a lot: The Last Family in England. Look for a review at Deborama's Book Reviews soon.

US acknowledges torture

The Information Clearinghouse website has a story from Agence France Presse that concerns the first official admission by US officials that torture by American personnel has occurred. The documents given to the UN committee against torture admits to torture of prisoners in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan, but says that all such acts were committed by low-ranking military personnel and were not approved by their superiors. Well, I guess it's a start. This, combined with more recent news that the American public is finally beginning to register some disapproval of the administration's pursuit of the Iraqi occupation, may in fact signal a long-overdue turnaround in the past three years of flagrant abuse of power on the part of America's ruling party.

Help save our rescue centre

Leicester Animal Aid, which runs the really excellent dog (and now also cat) rescue centre in Huncote, Leics, is facing the possibility of closing down at the end of this year due to a severe funding crisis. As the link explains, the organisation is entirely funded by donations (money and in-kind) and volunteers. The future survival of over 100 dogs and cats is at stake. Please visit the website and donate what you can to help. Our Sandi, who passed away about a year ago, and our current only-dog Desmond (pictured), both came to us from LAA at Huncote, as did Cassie, our Akita who died in 2000.

Baghdad Burning

Because I have not been keeping up with my blogging and, more importantly, my blog reading, I missedRiverbend's blistering rebuttal of Thomas Friedman's ill-informed (and as Riverbend says, incredibly arrogant) NY Times article Outrage and Silence. Don't you miss it, too; this is really vital reading.

Blogkeeping - Bookcrossing and more

I have finally got a few books registered at BookCrossing.com. You may need to join (free) to see this. Most of the books are in the "available" category, but two in "To be read" and two in "Permanent collection". Now I can go to book-crossing meet-ups with something to offer!
Other personal news - DH and I went to Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield today. It was quite exhausting. (It is also 75 miles away.) I bought tons of clothes, though. For work, and the possible upcoming job hunt. More later on that, as I am under a gag order at the moment.

Howard Zinn on the scourge of Nationalism

I found this link (from The Progressive) at Whole Wide World of Fat Buddha. It echoes my feelings on the subject perfectly. In my heart, I belong to a nation called "None" and our anthem is "Don't Fence Me In."

News of the Weird

This is a story I would think was a hoax, except who could make up such a thing? And I must ask, how many mayors, whether controversial or not, love their city so much that they want to import poisonous snakes within its boundaries?

Blogkeeping

I have been so bad that my page hits have drastically declined. I haven't done any actual blogging for over a week, but you may notice a change nevertheless. I have amended my template here to remove the button for meetup.com. meetup.com began charging for its "services", which is not so bad in itself, but what they are charging is absurd - 9 USD a month per group. It appears that people are leaving in droves. I was in 10 groups, some of which were struggling to become active, only one of which was really robust and every single one of them is either disbanded or abandoned. I have added in its place three new buttons for the current focus of my online community-building: tribe.net, Google groups and especially Bookcrossing.com.
Bookcrossing, Nottingham, was the one really active meetup group I was (am) in. It has migrated to a mailing group in yahoo.co.uk. But all the real action is in the bookcrossing-uk group and the Bookcrossing site itself. I just received my release kit from their US supply store this morning and I plan to get really involved with it.
I migrated my East Midlands Webloggers group, which has still not really got off the ground, to Google Groups, and Jay followed suit with the Midlands American Ex-pats group which she moderated. And I am still to be found hanging out on tribe.net sometimes. I wish it would get more participation in the UK (apart from London) because it is most useful and meaningful in its local dimension, with the possibility of f2f meetings, job seeking, swapping, and other activities. But it's still serendipitously interesting, for all its flaws.
I have also changed the template a bit over at Deborama's Books; I added a link to a great auxiliary Bookcrossing site called Wren's Crossing. I will soon (I hope) be putting up a small flood of new book reviews, including some books got through Bookcrossing.

Blogkeeping

I get political at Deborama's Kitchen.

Everyone Goes to the Mercado

Here's more of my "homesick for Minneapolis" blogging, courtesy of City Pages. This will be cross-posted at Deborama's Kitchen due to the obvious food-related content.

Sunday Times on Gorgeous George

Focus: Zero to hero in today's Sunday Times attempts to put George Galloway into context and answer the question is he a friend or a foe of Saddam Hussein? The answer they come up with is a little bit of both, and is best summed up by GG's own statement during an earlier phase of his besiegement by press and less radical lefties: “My opposition to American imperialism is greater than my opposition to this or that tinpot dictator with whom American imperialism from time to time falls out.”
While it is true that Galloway visited Saddam in 1994 and again in 1998, and that he made a sycophantic speech to him in 1994 and that he refused to condemn him in the harsh tones demanded by the establishment, but instead praised him with faint damns, it also true that he marched, demonstrated and spoke out harshly against Saddam from 1980 to 1993 (even though he also opposed the 1991 Gulf War.) In fact, in his own ultra-leftist way, Galloway has been quite consistent. The one thing the American people (including especially the Senate) will never understand is that there other standards of ethical public behaviour than their own, and there is a long and not yet defeated (despite what all the uber-patriots may wish) tradition of international anti-imperialist socialism which stands unashamedly in opposition to them. The British Labour party knows all about this tendency, but has no truck with it; but New Labour has no consistency or principles at all. If Galloway's actions in 1994 were so repellent, why did they wait until 2003 to expel him? I think we all know why: he has a following and he wins elections.

More Wal-Mart news than you can shake a big stick at

LabourStart, the excellent online news source and organising tool, has a dedicated Wal-Mart page. Get all the hottest late-breaking news about those corporate buzzards that bring you Asda supermarkets. Along with scofflaw child labour practices, political ads comparing their opponents to Nazis, and health-care benefits for their workers that are so lacking that in most states Wal-Mart workers get their only health-care from state benefits (if they exist in their state that is, otherwise, nada.)

Galloway vs. The US Senate: Transcript of Statement

Thanks to Joani (via e-mail) for this link. Joani, ya oughta get a blog, you are so very on the ball. Via Common Dreams, this is the entire transcript of George Galloway telling the US Senate exactly where they can put it and how hard to shove it up there. Respect!

Stress at work costs economy £100bn a year, says Mind

A story in the Guardian cites the charity Mind in saying that one in five people in Britain are too stressed to go to work. I can readily believe it. I think three of the remaining four are nearly as stressed, but can't face the hassle of trying to sign off work, or the added stress of losing their job and having a reduced income. The one in five remaining is simply too stupid to be stressed, and he is usually made the manager of the other four, which is why they are so stressed. So it's really stupidity that's costing the economy £100bn a year, but just try getting funding to prove that.

Permanent power to the non-elected

A Guardian comment piece, The rise of Tony Zoffis, shows just what an appallingly un-democratic thing is going on, has been going on since 1997, with New Labour's education policy. Now the naked power play is in the open, with ennobling of Andrew Adonis to be supposedly a junior minister in education, but obviously he is still calling the shots, "ensuring total obedience from his nominal boss, Ruth Kelly", as Francis Beckett says in the Guardian. Unlike in America, where the legislative and executive branches are completely separate and the President appoints the entire cabinet from non-elected citizens, in Britain all cabinet members must be members of one of the houses of Parliament. This means that non-MPs must be brought in through the Lords. The really sick thing about this, is that even if Tony B. is ousted soon from power, and Adonis's moment of cabinet glory is decently brief, he will always be Lord Adonis, and always eligible to sit in the House of Lords, exerting some power however limited over the people who never elected him and never would have done.

Nuclear energy battle looming

Margaret Beckett is accused of blocking the government from considering building new nuclear power plants as part of its strategy for achieving carbon emission reductions. On one side of the argument, some government policy wonks think solar and wind energy are "unproven" and too expensive, and say nuclear power has the "potential" to be green. But committed environmentalists will never buy that. How can a technology be called "green" if it produces deadly wastes? I myself would have to come down on the no-nukes-ever (what part of "no" don't they understand?) side of the argument.

The best news always comes from Minnesota

Another rural Minnesota high school in the news, not for a mass shooting this time, but for a good old-fashioned pro-American free speech protest. In the best tradition of Minnesota liberals and feminists, two high school girls were sent home from school for wearing "offensive" T-shirts from the "Vagina Monologues". This came after a rally was held outside the school with numerous students wearing similar T-shirts in support of one of the girls, who had been threatened with expulsion for wearing a button purchased at the show that read simply "I [heart] my vagina". At the rally, girls wore T-shirts with the same slogan and boys wore T-shirts proclaiming "I support your vagina". Most of the students turned their T-shirts inside out to hide the slogans before returning to school, but two girls who wore theirs the right way were sent home for a day. "We consider public education to be the backbone of America. And we have to draw the line. If you let this in, what's next?" said the principal of the school.

Those wacky MIT guys

From the Guardian:

One of the strongest arguments against time travel is that we are not overrun with curious tourists from the future. A university student in Boston plans to change that, by inviting budding Doctor Whos to the world's first time traveller convention this weekend.
The organiser, Amal Dorai - a masters student in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - aims to test the theory of time travel by inviting people from the future to the event.

Dorai says: "Of course, no time travellers doesn't rule out the possibility of time travel, they could have just decided not to come to our convention." Hmm - yeah. But it gets better.

Physicists believe some kind of time travel is theoretically possible, but it will take hundreds or even thousands of years to work out the technical details.
Concerned that people will have forgotten his convention by then, Mr Dorai is urging volunteers to publicise the event to future generations by carving the details into clay tablets and burying notices in time capsules. He has slipped invitations on long-lasting paper inside dozens of obscure books in the MIT and Harvard University libraries.

Blogkeeping

I have just added a couple of new recipe-finding links at Deborama's Kitchen. One of the many things I love about the internet is the recipe swapping community. Where would I be without it? And where would all these chatty housewives with the great recipes be without it?
Over at Deborama's Book Reviews there is finally some action. Besides the Labour History sale on (see previous post), I have reviewed not one but three books today. Two are in a double-header (Hey, Nostradamus and Vernon God Little) and one stands alone: Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, by Amanda Foreman. You will find that the book reviews/store has a new look, with new "high tech" links on all today's books. I am not all that crazy about it, but blame Amazon.co.uk. (You can still do the old style links, with a lot of faffing, but then they penalise you for it on the commish.) Sorry about that.

Buy a book for International Labour Day

I have set up a tribute to May Day on my book review and bookstore blog. A personally selected list of 21 excellent books on labour, philosophy and labour history are posted for your perusal, in the new improved Amazon associates format. I added a few of them to my wish list, too, I must confess.

Defrocked lesbian minister wins appeal

Elizabeth Stroud, the lesbian Methodist minister defrocked by a close verdict in a church trial, has won an appeal on the grounds that the Methodist Book of Discipline had failed to define "open and practicing homosexual".

This Flickr thing is addictive

Of course, I had to create : Grand-daughter Gallery - a photoset on Flickr.

My Name is Rachel Corrie

Speaking of the deaths of activists, which I was doing just recently, there is now a play about the life and death of Rachel Corrie. It's playing at the Royal Court theatre, and the script is based on Corrie's own letters and e-mails.

Atlanta pictures on Flickr

I decided to use Flickr as my photoblog site and here is the album of Atlanta pictures I have created there.

Deconstructing Hitchens

Here is a wonderfully meaty article about the astonishing and disappointing change of heart of former leftist pundit Christopher Hitchens. I got this link from Ethereal Girl, who in turn got it from Altercation.

Pictures from Atlanta

I have put the pictures on my website, but they are, like before, not especially user friendly. This link will get you the index, and clicking on the individual names will display the pictures in full size, one at a time. I am going to also put them on a photoblog in a bit; Carey is using a thing called TextAmerica (this is his blog and this is Alix's) so, although I don't like the chauvinistic name, if it proves easy to use I will set it up there. More on that later. I am off to an event of some kind in Cropston with my yoga teacher. I don't know what to expect, so more on that later, too.

The truth behind the picture that shocked the world

This story is from last Sunday's Observer. It tells the story of the woman whose body was found hanging from a tree near Srebrenica, and of the fate of her husband, which led her to this grim suicide. It also tells the story of her two children, who did not know where she had gone when she disappeared from the refugee camp and then, traumatically, recognised her from the picture when a journalist showed it to them six months after it was published.

Death of an activist

Christopher of Back to Iraq 3.0 has a touching tribute to his friend Marla Ruzicka, an activist in Iraq who was killed Saturday by a suicide bomber. He says of her "She was so many things to so many people, but for the journalists who knew and loved her she was, ultimately, our heart and our conscience." Her organisation, CIVIC (Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict) can accept donations in her name at this website.

Riverbend on the weird unreality of the American media

I missed this post on Baghdad Burning almost three weeks ago; it was when I was having a combination of stressed out overwork and a dodgy computer problem, so my blog reading was severely curtailed. But it's worth referring back to. I was in America myself last week, and even being in Britain for years and being used to British newscasts (which Riverbend would probably also find to be quite sanitised) has caused me to look askance at the American news that I used to assume was normal. It's not normal, though, it's annoying, puerile and mostly pointless. I can only imagine what it's like to people in a place like Iraq. Yet another abysmal failure at winning hearts and minds, I'm afraid.

Blogkeeping

I have been intensely busy since returning from Atlanta, and with little time to catch up on sleep. I am not totally unpacked, but that's because the airline (Delta, yucky food too) lost one of my bags and I didn't get it until Tuesday. And I haven't had a chance to post, mainly because my computer at home was acting squirrely, but DH fixed it last night. I have got my Atlanta pics uploaded to my computer, but not to my website yet; I hope to have that done this weekend. On Deborama's Personal Page, you will see a new quiz result - what personality disorder are you? I may be a little histrionic, it says. Well, duh. Anyone could have told you that.

Blogging from Atlanta - Part III

This will probably be my last blog post from Atlanta, as I am flying home tomorrow. Wednesday evening I went to a concert with Carey and Alix - Iron and Wine at the Variety Playhouse in L5P. I got to try a martini at the Sweet Lime restaurant (see previous Atlanta post) and I opted for the Thai Tea Martini which was quite nice. I had more crab, more tofu-corn-cakes and then just some edamame, which I shared with Alix, who was also having shushi. This was before the show. Afterwards we went to the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club (note: there are no yachts and indeed no navigable waters within many miles of Atlanta) because it was about the only thing open. I had two vodka-limes. I was hung over the next day. Which was yesterday, a busy and exhausting day. It started with brunch with my very old friend Charles, proprietor of the Atlanta Book Exchange. (He's probably not net-savvy enough to appreciate that I just gave him a link. He says the inventory is online but I couldn't find it; I'll post it later if I can get it from him.) Then we went by the bookstore to chat with employee Jim, an almost-as-old friend and there we bought a few books. Then we went around photographing places we used to live. Then Carey dropped me at a Marta station and I went downtown and visited GSU, my alma mater, and Underground Atlanta (I say don't bother) and then, fool that I am, I walked all the way to Peachtree Center in my new achey-painy but rather sexy sandals. Ow, my feet, my back! I Marta'd back to Inman Park, where Carey picked me up and then we went on a marathon grocery shopping. Then we went to Carey's place, which he rents from and where he lives with Stephen, my godson and his sort-of step-brother. Also living there is John, Carey's uncle. Stephen was out but had promised to come by to see me, and he did, but only for about 15 minutes. When I finally got back to my motel at about 10:30 pm I was beat. Tonight I am making dinner for Carey and Alix in the motel suite kitchenette. Tomorrow is the last day and I don't have much planned, just packing, checking out, hanging out with Carey and starting the long flight home.

Blogging from Atlanta - Part II

Yesterday, Carey and I went to Little Five Points (L5P), a neighbourhood with which we both have history, mostly Carey, from his days of living there, aged 10 to 13 or so, with his father, and his father's mistress, D, who is the adopted parent of his "brother" Stephen, my godson. Yes, it is all very incestuous, which is more or less why I left Atlanta in 1984 for the relative sanity of Minnesota. (Where I was lucky enough to have primary custody of Carey until 1989, when his father took primary custody by a prior arrangement.)
But to get back to L5P, as we walked through the area, Carey pointed out things - Junkman's Daughter has expanded and moved, and the location where it now is used to be a little ghetto supermarket, where Carey and Stephen walked to after school to buy 69-cent burritos and, no doubt, sugary treats. Sevananda, the venerable health-food co-op, has also moved, but it shrank. Ababdabba is still in the same place, and I bought some high-tech walking shoes there and changed out of my painful sandals. We went to a Japanese restaurant called Sweet Lime with dollar sushi, and I made a complete pig of myself eating the most fabulous dinner, to get fortified before the long dusty walk to the brand new Target store on Moreland Avenue. I had two sushis, smelt-roe and salmon, then tofu-corn cakes with chili sauce, then a soft-shelled crab, tempura-fried with a light soy-citrus dipping sauce, and then seared but otherwise mostly raw tuna with soba noodles and two-seaweed salad. Carey had the other of the two crabs and Hawaiian shrimp, which was tempura shrimp with a sweet sauce and veggies and jasmine rice. I had an iced tea and Carey had two Japanese beers, and he used the bottle to give me a quick lesson in Katakana. It was all fabulous, and we were too full to have the yummy-sounding ice cream. They also have martinis, which I would have tried but was too tired to risk drinking.
After becoming even more laden with purchases at Target, we took a taxi, first to drop Carey off at his house SE of Atlanta, then me to my motel here in Buckhead, about 10 miles in the opposite direction. The bill was $45! (Thank heaven for the weak dollar.)

Unitarian Jihad!

This is priceless. Here's a little snippet to whet your appetite:

We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes.
Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day.

By Jon Carroll, from SFGate.com. I received this from a friend on a mailing list.

Blogging from Atlanta - part I

It appears that my motel here has a "business centre" with a computer guests can use for free. There is only the one, and of course, this morning, some guy was totally monopolising it. But anyway, I can easily and freely blog from here. I got in yesterday about 3 pm (plus 5 hour time difference, after getting up at 4 am to be driven by long-suffering DH to Gatwick.) So by 10 pm when I finally tried to sleep I had been up 24 hours. I got to meet my son Carey's girlfriend Alix, who is of course very nice. We went out to dinner and I was craving veggies; Alix recommended a truly excellent restaurant (review to come later.) I went out this a.m. pretty early and after the motel "continental" breakfast, I walked to the Marta station, Marta'd to Midtown and then walked all over there. I have come up with this silly idea of photographing all the places I ever lived, even though a few aren't there anymore. I got 3 so far. Then I had lunch at Mary Mac's tea room, where I also bought DH a cookbook and a feedcap. Then my feet hurt too much to walk anymore so I got a taxi back here. Trivia for the day: The AJC (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) had an almost Brit-worthy headline for the royal nuptials - a Windsor knot.

Going away again

Again (sounding like a broken record here (hey, is anyone who reads this old enough to actually remember what a broken record sounds like?)) I am sorry to neglect my few loyal hopeful readers. I just wanted to note that I will be out of town and not blogging for about a week starting this Saturday. I may find something to say between now and Saturday, but if I have things to say between the 9th and the 16th, it will have to wait. I shall be in Atlanta, visiting my son, my god-son and a very few old friends. (I have about 1% as many friends in Atlanta as I do in Minneapolis, but alas no family living in Minneapolis any more.) I hope to come back with gorgeous photos.

The Doctor is not in

The BBC is furious at Christopher Eccleston. After making one series of the widely heralded return of Dr. Who, he has quit, for what appear to be, quite frankly, rather prima donna reasons. ("I don't want to be typecast," he whinged. Too late for that, I think.) Could it be that his co-star, Billie Piper, was said by at least one TV critic to have "acted the socks off" of the more credited Eccleston? Part of the BBC's issue with the premature departure has to do with money. The Beeb badly needs good "income streams" and they have already invested heavily in promotional gear with Eccleston's image. "What child is going is going to want to buy a Doctor Who action figure of an old Doctor when a new one is already on the television?" They have also had to re-shoot the final scenes of the show to pave the way for a new star to take his place, said The Daily Mirror. Writers were forced to hastily improvise a new cliffhanger, rumoured to show the doctor disappearing into the ether.

Blogkeeping

Deborama's Kitchen has a post about the arrival of Bisquick in the local hypermarket. The Book Review blog has a post about the BBC production of Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters (highly recommended).

For Easter - A redemption story

Like Jeanne, I too meant to blog about the story of Ashley Smith, a suburban single mom who subdued a "dangerous" murderer with home-cooked food and acceptance and talk. And like Jeanne, I am glad someone else did a good job of explaining the importance of this compelling story. Instructions for Care: What Ashley Smith Reminded Us is an article by peace activist Susan Van Haitsma in Common Dreams.

Hardly Lake Wobegone

Red Lake to White Media - stay out! Non-Americans may not have noticed - there has been another mass killing at a high school, and this one is a predominantly Native American (Ojibwe tribe) school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation near Bemidji Minnesota. "Normally" (and how sick is it to use that word in reference to such a thing?) when a community experiences a murderous teenage rampage, the whole town and its environs and inhabitants are transformed (not for the better) by the intense media attention. Red Lake, however, is what is known as a "closed" reservation, where the Tribal Council has broad powers to limit access by anyone not an approved resident of the rez. And they are exercising their power fully in this case. Which has got to be a good thing, in my opinion.

Blogkeeping and some journalling

I just recently added Creative Loafing (Atlanta) to Deborama's Fund of Knowledge under the Local News Sources category. I was browsing the web trying to find places to shop in Atlanta. That's because I am going there for a week, from April the 9th, primarily to visit my son, Carey. But hey, I may as well shop a bit too.
I recently attended a meetup in Nuneaton of American Ex-pats. I met two, Jay and Carla, and also Jay's English husband. We were all three American women with English husbands and we live within 5 miles of each other. We are trying to grow the network of Midlands Americans.
Deborama's friends, colleagues and family have been plagued by illness and stress lately, so even though I am theoretically fine, with my thin psychic skin, I am feeling the effects. My mother-in-law had a heart attack (she's much better now), my husband is in an emotional trough, the guy next to me at work on the verge of a total emotional meltdown, and a woman I ride to work with on the train most days has a 21 year old grand-daughter who just had her second major brain surgery and has apparently had some brain trauma because she is in a sort of fantasy state and has severe short-term memory loss.
All this is partly why I have not been blogging very much. I am just wiped out when I get home and then the weekends pass in a daze of TV and messed-up sleep patterns. I am off work until next Tuesday so maybe I can get something done, at least my backlog of book reviews. I am thinking of introducing some TV reviews. I am in awe of the wonderful site Television Without Pity, but I would do much more selective, and much shorter, reviews. Feedback?

Rosie O'Donnell

Yes, that Rosie O'Donnell, has a blog and it is written in blank verse and this post is about depression, mostly. It's very good, read it.

Blogkeeping

A little while ago I got an invitation from a person who had started up a website to feature posts by various bloggers in a news digest format. It sounded like a good idea, but I did not want to submit any posts until I had checked it out. I am glad I did; after monitoring it for about a month, I was moved to write the following reply to the founder of the site:

Dear ******:
I have been reading your blog *** for a few weeks now, having added it
to my Bloglines feed as soon as you had the feed up and ready (and
just watching it before that.) On reflection, I have removed it from
my Bloglines feed, and I want to take the opportunity to notify you
that I am not interested at this time in participating as a writer,
forum-member or supporter. Quite frankly, I am very turned off by the
quality of most of the writers. And I do think you have a real
problem with bias. You are basically sounding a single note, and it
is the note of a rather shallow, male-dominated, US-boosting, blindly
and reactively conservative viewpoint, one which I do not even care
enough about to bother arguing with.
I wish you well for the future, and I will probably check in about
once a month to see if things improve, but at the age of 52, my life
is too short to spend any of it reading the drivel of pimply-faced
frat boys who think they are libertarians, or the middle-aged men who
write like them.
Kind regards,
Deborama

In a way, this is rather tragic, because I am not sure that the founder of this blog shares the bias of his writers (whom he is paying, by the way, as soon as the blog generates enough revenue. But even so, good idea, poor execution. Would it be possible to start a similar enterprise that featured a balanced number of liberal and conservative but high-quality bloggers, a few interesting nutters of various fringes, and a real international viewpoint, rather than just a few token stories by American "friends" abroad? I seriously doubt it. And that is very sad.
On another note - I have a nice post about bananas at Deborama's Kitchen.

England, abolition and the current immigration debate

The air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe, and so everyone who breathes it becomes free. Everyone who comes to this island is entitled to the protection of English law, whatever oppression he may have suffered and whatever may be the colour of his skin.

In preparation for the mammoth task of reviewing the mammoth literary work known as "the Barock Cycle" (Neal Stephenson) I have been browsing the Quicksilver Metaweb, where I found the sublime quote above. Slavery and the history of abolition movements is one of about a dozen major themes that run through the three weighty tomes that make up the Barock Cycle. As you may know, abolition movements, the study of, is one of my areas of passionate interest, and the Stephenson novels seem to uncannily hit upon a lot of them (cryptanalysis, metaphysical debates, religious wars and slightly unusual sexual practices also feature prominently.)
I am struck by the vast philosophical gulf between the sentiments in the quote above, from an English judge in an historic case which may have sparked the British abolitionist movement, and the beliefs (or perhaps total lack of beliefs) of the current guardians of British liberty, ironically known as the Labour Party.
Several cases in point will illustrate this:

• The new anti-terror legislation


• The terrible decline in military ethics in recent decades


• Blatantly racist policies towards "asylum seekers" and other immigrants


• And all I can say about this one is: "All intolerant people shall be shot!"


• "Unless, of course, they are intolerant of 'travellers', because that sort of prejudice is just normal middle-class values."

Things are not looking good for Sinn Fein

Parliament has decided to fine the Sinn Fein party for the crimes of the IRA. And things are looking very bad indeed for the IRA, which has (predictably) been called upon to disband by many parties, including the American envoy to Northern Ireland and six out of ten nationalists and almost half of Sinn Fein supporters.

You want a rabbit?

Riverbend's latest post at Baghdad Burning starts out with some opinions about the killing of Nicola Calipari and then segues into an anecdotal account of a horrendous confrontation between doctors and Iraqi National Guardsmen in a hospital, and thence into discussing the inadequacy of Iraqi officials under the occupation. It ends up with a piece of Iraqi folk wisdom, hence the rabbit thing:
“Tireed erneb- ukhuth erneb. Tireed ghazal- ukhuth erneb.” The translation for this is, “You want a rabbit? Take a rabbit. You want a deer? Take a rabbit.” Except we didn’t get any rabbits- we just got an assortment of snakes, weasels and hyenas.

Trudeau's tribute to the inspiration behind Uncle Duke

Doonesbury is running a little series featuring Duke (now an American warlord in Iraq) in an existential yet surrealist tribute to the good doctor, aka Mr. Fear and Loathing, aka Hunter S. Thompson.

US troops kill rescuer as Italian hostage is plucked to safety in Iraq

Story from the Guardian. I could hardly believe I was hearing this correctly when I caught just the tail end of the story on the news yesterday. And yet, in a way, it was a disaster just waiting to happen. It has long been noted that the demoralised American troops in Iraq (and to some extent this is true of all coalition forces), having been given an essentially impossible mission (shades of Vietnam again) have been responding by becoming increasingly "trigger-happy" and careless of suffering and the loss of human life, which is all around them daily whether they precipitate it or not. And now it has happened, and the victim is a coalition agent in a high-profile rescue operation.

Buy some stuff

My daughter, Aimee Danger has an online store with some very cool things for sale. Wouldn't you like a wall calendar with a picture of my first grandchild on it? I know I would.